...drinking tasted like the most exquisite wine, meat changed to raspberry in my mouth, and vice versa. I could not have tasted the difference between a meat cutlet and a peach.

     My neighbours began to appear rather strange. Their pupils became as big as an owl’s; their noses lengthened into probosces; their mouths widened like the opening of a bell. Their faces were bathed in a mystical light.

     One of them having a pallid complexion and a black beard, laughed aloud at an invisible performance; another made vain attempts to bring his glass to his lips and the resulting distorted efforts provoked resounding jeers from his companions.

     One man, shaking with nervous twitches, twidled his thumbs with remarkable agility; another man was slumped back in his chair, his eyes unseeing and his arms motionless, let himself drift dissolutely to the bottomless sea of oblivion.

     With my elbows on the table, I contemplated all this with lucidity and what was left of my reason which came and went at intervals, like a wavering light about to go out. A soft warmth spread through my limbs, and madness, like a wave which crashes

onto a rock, then recedes to break once again, approached then withdrew from my brain, finally conquering it altogether.

     This strange guest, hallucination, had come to stay with me.

     “To the drawing room, to the drawing room!” cried one of the guests; “can’t you hear those heavenly choirs? The musicians have been at their stands for some time now.”

     And indeed, a delightful melody drifted towards us over the clamour of voices.

An Uninvited Guest

     The drawing room is an enormous room of carved and gilded panelling, a painted ceiling whose friezes depicted satyrs chasing nymphs through the long grass, a huge fireplace of coloured marble and luxuriant brocade curtains which exuded the opulence of times gone by. Upholstered pieces of furniture, settees, armchairs and bergères, large enough to accommodate the skirts of duchesses and marchionesses, welcomed the hashish eaters with soft and open arms. A fireside chair by the corner of the fireplace beckoned me, and I installed myself there, abandoning myself without resistance to the effects of this incredible drug.